This submission is not a plea for less rigorous science. The opposite is the case. The Carbon Coalition believes that the science of soil carbon has been conducted in ways that Official Science would describe as ‘sound’, but which are in fact unsound.
Science is sacrosanct in our society. It is also poorly understood. It is deferred to as authoritative and rarely questioned. Scientists therefore have a responsibility to use their status ethically.*
In the field of Climate Change, policy makers habitually refer to initiatives going ahead provided the ‘science is sound’. ‘Sound’ can be replaced by ‘robust’ or ‘reliable’. But ‘unsound’ science looks the same as ‘sound’ science to a non-scientist.
Although it is considered to be above politics and free from personal agendas, Science is a human institution and hence is subject to all the social and political dimensions of life. The discipline of Science is organised as a self-regulating community of professionals who control the education and admittance to the industry of new practitioners. It controls the output of its members via a system called ‘peer review’.
The “Scientific method” claims to be based upon ‘objectivity’ – ie. the inquiries of its members are free from the influence of personal values or outside interests. However Science is readily influenced by its sources of funding and the self-interest of its members. For instance, the choice to follow the path of Industrial Agriculture after World War 2 was made under the influence of the major global fertiliser and chemical companies. They in turn funded research and education.** Education in turn was fashioned to meet their needs, ie. the chemistry and the physics of soil were taught to undergraduates almost exclusively. Chemistry is the language of the chemical companies. Physics because the soil was conceived of as a delivery medium for water and nutrient inputs for plants. Some scientists believe the role of soil is to hold plants up and deliver chemicals to the roots: “There is little scientific evidence to suggest that organic matter has any unique properties that cannot be done without,” asserted P.E.V. Charman and M.M. Roper in the textbook SOILS in 2000.*** Soil Organic Matter – mainly decomposing plant material – provides food for the billions of microbes which make nutrients available to plants and determine soil health and productivity. It is largely generated by ‘natural farming’ methods, rather than by Industrial Agriculture.****
It is hard to believe that a GRDC Research Update in 2007 would report that: “The lack of experimental evidence, under Australian conditions, of the benefits of increasing soil organic matter has also led some scientists to question the appropriateness of advising growers to increase organic matter inputs.” In the same report the GRDC revealed that its experiments had provided evidence that: “Increasing the amount of organic matter throughput will boost soil organic carbon levels.” *****
It is significant that this research project was not initiated by Science but by growers concerned about the sustainability of their continuous intensive cropping systems, largely due to declining soil structure. Soil organic matter and soil organic carbon lead to the third leg of the stool – Soil Biology – long neglected because it offers an alternative source of nutrients via microbial processes and is negatively impacted by the tools of Industrial Agriculture such as biocides (herbicides, pesticides, etc.).
The Scientific Community’s hostility towards ‘natural farming’ practices that work to maximise microbial contributions to fertility can be understood in this context******. Its sustained campaign against the notion of soil carbon offsets or credits as an incentive for farmers to change their land management practices so as to sequester carbon can be understood from the same viewpoint. Carbon credits encourage changes in behaviour towards more ‘natural’ methods. Many of those opposed to it are employed to achieve through education, encouragement and extension the changes that the market for offsets will produce. Given the aggressive free market for research funds that successive Governments have created and the long term defunding on soil science for a decade, it is understandable that, until the science and extension community can see a role for themselves in the Carbon Economy, their opposition will continue.
Science needs educated, informed policy-makers as customers who can interpret the context of its output which can change the meaning of its findings.
* Many scientists in the soil carbon debate comment on matters of likely market protocols and structures, of which they have no special knowledge. Their comments – which are misleading in most cases – are never predicated by a declaration of ignorance and lack of expertise.
** Soil science education in New Zealand is funded by the fertliser industry.
*** Charman, PEV and Murphy, BW, Soils: Their Properties & Management, Oxford, 2000
****Natural farming techniques include grazing management, pasture cropping, biological farming, Biodynamics, Natural Sequence Farming, etc. See the Carbon Farming Handbook, Carbon Farmers of Australia, 2010.
***** Research Update - Maintaining the productivity of soils under continuous intensive cropping [16 August 2007] http://www.grdc.com.au/director/events/researchupdates?item_id=8725C123EF744252E73E079F39D567BD&pageNumber=1
******CSIRO’s enthusiasm for Genetically Modification from Monsanto cont inues this tradition of alignment with Industrial Agriculture.
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